So had a meeting with the Lawyer for child that was finally appointed, who had no appointments available for 3 days after sending me an e-mail asking to make an appointment with him.

So I walk in, and he said lets get straight into it, im doing this as a favor for the court, due to the amount of work I have, and given the only thing in dispute is Christmas day, Im not intrested in trying to sort anything other than Christmas Day out for now, so I met with my ex and my Kids earlier in the day, and ex was saying cant we just sort this out, and said she can do 3.30 pick up from 10km north of original plan.

In my head, I was thinking, we had to go though all this crap just for her to finally counter propose a very slight variation (original time 3pm), and said yes no problems with that, if thats what its going to take, to get my kids on Christmas Day, then fine.

When then continued chatting for about 20 minutes, and when I left the office, I felt like I had won.

I then text my ex saying thanks for agreeing to Christmas day, and lets try and keep the lawyers and court out of it in the future.

Her reply was I don’t know what time he told you, and you started the court process, so well get it all done properly on paper.

So straight away I knew, I had not won, I had been played again…. She obviously knew that I would agree to the time that she had put forward to the lawyer for child, but with the plan of saying there must of being a miss communication, because she then text saying she said between 4 and 4.30…. (times I would not agree to because there would still be 40 min drive to get to where I had planned on taking kids for Christmas day, then to set up etc, would end up running out of day.)

So even now a week out from Christmas…. I still have no idea if I will have my kids this Christmas….

Then we have the issues with the actual court process…